The Rise of the Sorcerers: Chapter Fourteen - ABOUT CHINESE SCIENCE
Diving suits of 45,000 years. - Aluminum bronze and alchemy. - The Treatise on mutations. - Chang Heng's seismograph. -The Astronomical Magics of the First Century. - The Mathematical Tradition. -The magic mirrors. - The I Ching. - The Pride of the Celestial Empire.
Intellectual contact with China is very difficult to establish. Even if you know the language, it's almost impossible to grasp the arguments and the intentions of the interlocutor. While we As we write this book, the European physicists at CERN (Centre for Physics and Sciences). National Scientific Research Journal) discuss the Next problem: Do China's recent discoveries about statons constitute enormous progress, or is it a major problem? simply from facts known and written in cultural language China?
Intellectual contact with China is very difficult to establish. Even if you know the language, it's almost impossible to grasp the arguments and the intentions of the interlocutor. While we As we write this book, the European physicists at CERN (Centre for Physics and Sciences). National Scientific Research Journal) discuss the Next problem: Do China's recent discoveries about statons constitute enormous progress, or is it a major problem? simply from facts known and written in cultural language China?
The same perplexity prevails in the American physics circle. So let's leave Professor Chi Pen Lao of Peking University to and the New China Agency for its assertions. According to these sources, in the mountains of the Hunan and on an island of the On Lake Tungting, granite bas-reliefs were discovered, which They represent non-human beings, or, rather, diving suits with elephant's trunk (respiratory system?).
These beings appear sometimes standing on the ground, now on objects cylindrical floating in the sky. According to the same sources, these Bas-reliefs are 45,000 years old! Here's something that It does not contradict our thesis. But we'd like to know how it's been that antiquity.
There are methods -thermoluminescence, paleomagnetism- to determine the dates, when radioactive carbon is not enough. However, that we As far as we know, these methods have never been applied in situ, and, as we know, the Beijing Academy of Sciences does not answer the letters sent to it. they write, it's hard to pronounce themselves... Let's hope that the information is accurate, and we only record the fact that the Chinese myths frequently allude to extraterrestrial visitors.
The documents and objects that we actually possess to sit and demonstrate the idea of a science and a technique in China, dating back to the first three centuries of the Christian era. Between forty thousand years before B.C. and three hundred after A.D., there is a considerable distance in time, the greatest of which, up to this point, moment, it has been pointed out in this book.
Aluminum bronze objects have been found in tombs that They date from the second century A.D. It seems impossible, but it's truth. Aluminum bronze cannot be obtained without electrolysis. Without However, the Chinese alchemists succeeded. ¿With what procedure? Here's what we'd like to know. In any case, It is worth noting some facts about Chinese alchemy.
We will use UNESCO's History of the Ancient World (third part, English edition). Chinese alchemy, whose roots should be traced back to To search through the unknown millenniums, was intended to transmute the adept, enabling him to acquire bodily wisdom and immortality; On the other hand, the manufacture of gold, based on a process of transmutation was but a stage for the To obtain products capable of assuring the adept the transcendence of the human condition. As the The work of UNESCO, alchemical gold was not intended for sale.
The earliest known alchemical text is the Ts'ant'ung-Ch'i. Like everyone else The Masters of Secret Sciences, the author writes under a pseudonym. The text explains, in ninety paragraphs, the manufacture, starting from the gold, of the Immortality Pill, by means of a complex thermal container, in an egg-shaped container and hermetically sealed. Like the famous Treatise on Mutations, The work uses the binary language of modern computers. In we already find the terms Yang and Yin, that is, the double opposition which forms the basis of the doctrine of Taoism.
Several treatises on alchemy have been discovered, all of them corresponding to the first three centuries of our era, but which They refer to much older facts. According to the authors, alchemists who managed to accomplish the Great Work would still live in "An Island of the Immortals." Other alchemical texts have been discovered after the Cultural Revolution, as Mao Tse-tung He is interested in alchemy.
Let us now turn to what can be verified.
There are two indisputable sources when it comes to China and its science. One of them is the work of Dr. Àlexander Kovda, Director of UNESCO's Natural Sciences Section. The other is the monumental history of science in China, of the English historian Joseph Needham, published by the University of Cambridge.
A first true and surprising fact emerges from these works: The Chinese possessed an exact and highly developed knowledge of seismology. This is something absolutely unique in the history of ancient civilizations. It was the Chinese who drafted A complete list of earthquakes since 780 before B.C. until 1644 A.D.
According to the chronicles, the Gods descended from heaven demanded the wording of this list. Consequently, the Godis They were singularly interested in the structure of the globe terrestrial. But there is something even more extraordinary. Chang Heng, Born in 78 A.D. and died in 139, he invented the seismograph. His The apparatus included a pendulum that could travel in eight directions and it operated certain mechanisms.
On the outside of the There were eight dragon heads, each of which He was holding a bronze ball. Underneath each head, a toad, with the Open mouth, he picked up the ball. In this way, indications were obtained that made it possible to situate, with the ruler and the compass, the epicenter of the earthquake. There is not the slightest doubt about the existence of this apparatus. But perhaps not enough thought has been given to its possible interpretation.
It is an application, in the brand of the Chinese customs and arts of the time, from the beginning of the advanced scientific scientists, and which presuppose a knowledge of the structure of the Earth, mathematics, and even the prolongation of the waves, the origin of which is unknown. All traces of this kind of study disappears after the Han dynasty. Why?
The same UNESCO work provides interesting data on the Chinese Astronomy. Alchemy comes before alchemy and is the secret science of the priest-kings of the Chu dynasty. These kings are partly mythological and partly real, and no Historian agrees on determining which emperors Chu were either mythical or real. Thus, Emperor Yao is sometimes quoted as legendary, and sometimes as human.
He is said to have named, for high astronomers who we also don't know if they were people or astronomers. entelechies. Very little is known in the West about this secret science. It is presumed that it was mainly used to study a planet invisible, but it was part of the solar system. From the sixteenth century B.C., the systematic observation of the eclipses of the sun, which, even then, seemed very ancient, going back to dates that are difficult to admit, because they refer to tens of thousands of years.
We'd know so much more if we owned Written documents. But a large number of these were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Not Mao's, but Wang Mang's. Wang Mang, called the Usurper, ruled China from 9 AD to the year 22 of the Christian Era; made the revolution, but ended up decree taxes so burdensome, that he was assassinated during the winter of the year 22 A.D.
In the course of the revolution, A lot of texts disappeared. Almost two hundred years later, New documents appear during the second century of the Christian era. Then we see emerging, on the basis of an immemorial tradition, a theory that the heavens were not composed of matter, but the stars and planets floated in an infinite and infinite space. empty. It is a theory that approximates the modern view, and absolutely unique in its time.
We also checked, from the year 5 of the Christian era, the existence of machines that imitate the Universe, which follow a star in its motion and allow Predict eclipses. In the third century, the prediction of the Eclipses have already reached an excellent degree.
At the end of the fourth century, it was predicted whether an eclipse would be partial or total. All this is perfectly proven in the works by Joseph Needham and Alexander Kovda. This celestial machinery (the expression is by Joseph Needham) seems to be absolutely original. It is distinguished from contemporary attempts at Alexandria and the subsequent realizations in Europe by the coordinate system, based on declination and ecliptic. Chinese Devices They make us think of modern telescopes, much more than the achievements of the Greeks or even those of the Middle Ages European.
It is not difficult to admit, from our point of view, that It is a secret science, developed in a very different way from the as it developed in Europe. It should also be noted that, from the In the first century of the Christian era, magnetism was known. This one is He began to use it for orientation, although the compass did not appeared up to a century later.
From the first century A.D., spoon-shaped magnets, which bore a drawing of the Big Dipper and they were oriented to the South. They certainly had an antiquity going back to the period of the immortal alchemists, about which we know practically nothing.
These discoveries seem to be related to mathematics which undoubtedly had a lot to do with Taoist magic. In the second century of the Christian era, we know that there was a "Memory of the Revolution." on the tradition of mathematical art", which relates the secrets of the of numbers with the mysteries of the Tao.
In the practical field, the same heirs of the tradition mathematics invented the abacus, around the time of Jesus Christ. This invention, contrary to what happened with others, did not it will reach the West, where it will be carried out independently.
All descriptions of the scientific development of the first millennium before B.C. they allude to magic mirrors. Some of these Mirrors are still preserved in private collections. Its structure and their use are incomprehensible. They are mirrors that have, behind them of the glass, extraordinarily complicated high reliefs.
When the mirror is illuminated by direct sunlight, these high reliefs, separated from the surface of the mirror by a crystal reflective, they become visible. On the other hand, this does not occur with artificial light. It's scientifically inexplicable. It is also They attribute other properties to these mirrors: associated with pairs, They transmit the images, like television. As far as we know, No experiment has been done to prove this.
The UNESCO specialists explain that the uniqueness of these mirrors are due to "small curvature differences" (?), and are show reserved about the other properties. If only it were possible demonstrate that these mirrors possess printed circuits and constitute mode of communication, we would have proof of the existence of advanced techniques in ancient China.
Finally, and in our view, the I Ching is the proof of the last and essential of a higher science in China. Need several books the size of this one to study in depth the meaning of the I Ching. We'll just mention what it looks like First of all, he noted that C. G. Jung's work is capital in this field, as in many others.
What is the I Ching?
The I Ching, or Book of Mutations, is a a work in which all the situations in which all the situations in which the that a human being can meet. It is also an oracle that It makes it possible to discover the situation in which the interrogator finds himself in the time to ask your question. To get the answer, the operator throws chopsticks in the air and pulls out a number, corresponding to their position. That number indicates a Oracle's phrase.
The key that indicates this reference -a key that, like the book, is an antiquity impossible to determine; maybe four thousand years- It uses the binary system, just like computers do. The operation of this "apparatus for knowing oneself > presupposes, Obviously, the intervention and play of paranormal phenomena.
As in Rhine's and Soal's parapsychological experiments, there is a violation of the laws of probabilities and a transfer of the time, from the past to the future. It is indisputable that the oracle and that their answers are often sensible. It doesn't fit I doubt that, if a part of the resources that are devoted to insignificant investigations, but reassuring measures, it would have advanced knowledge universal.
Which is eye-catching, even regardless of the look paranormal phenomenon, is the use of a binary key and at the same time At the same time, the subtle classification of all human problems in a limited number of typical situations. This involves ways to abstract thought, certainly equal to or superior to those of every known civilization from 2000 B.C.
What if Let's recap: aluminum manufacturing, seismography, astronomy and infinite space, synthesis of gold, magic mirror, I Ching, we will have to admit that there was a civilization in China Absolutely original and always oriented towards technique.
This civilization obviously raises many questions relative to the past. But it also raises others, relating to the present:
Given its immense power of abstraction, related to a considerable technical capacity since the remotest antiquity, that China has not progressed, to quickly secure the world domination? Why has the West triumphed over this powerful civilization?
According to traditionalists, the answer must be sought in the fact that Taoism quickly degenerated into a set of practices of quackery, breaking the bond with the "immortals." materialists like Joseph Needham or Alexander Kovda, the proletariat it allowed itself to be shackled, and China lost the opportunity for a revolution industrial and a 1917. None of these answers are entirely Satisfactory.
But if we want to understand Chinese pride We have to go back to the ancient sources and see in them the reason for an immemorial pride, as well as the immemorial justification of the ambition to rule the world.